The author is David Halberstam, whose Vietnam-era bestseller "The Best and the Brightest" bore a title that pretty much sums up what Halberstam himself has become in America's literary community.

In recent years, Halberstam has turned frequently to sports journalism, most compellingly bringing baseball history alive in books like "Summer of '49" and "October 1964."

"The Teammates" is not on the scale of some of his earlier works.

But it's a short (just over 200 pages), sweet ride, a trip back to a time that doesn't exist anymore, a time when players often were teammates for most if not all of their careers, not just until the next fat, free-agent contract came calling.

Even then, the bond that linked Williams, DiMaggio, Doerr and Pesky, who all started out on the West Coast, was unusually strong. And it so remained until the magnetic Williams, the first of them to go, was dying.

Halberstam draws sharply-etched portraits of each of them.

But the book's hook is a 1,300-mile car trip that DiMaggio, Pesky and another friend, Dick Flavin, took in October 2001 to Florida to see Williams one last time (Doerr was unable to join them because he was caring for his ailing wife at their home in Oregon).

In many ways DiMaggio, Doerr and Pesky were more of a family to Williams than his dysfunctional real family.

"My guys," he called them.

They understood his moods, his needs, his larger-than-life persona, and they accepted the whole package, hard as it was on their friendship, at times.

"It was like there was a star on top of his head, pulling everyone toward him like a beacon," Pesky said.

Williams was the leftfielder, DiMaggio next to him in center, with Doerr, who like Williams would go on to the Baseball Hall of Fame, at second base and Pesky at shortstop. Despite World War II service, they were together on the Red Sox, who only once could dethrone the Yankees during that era, for from eight to 12 years. And they never lost touch in retirement.

That last Florida reunion was not the kind they usually had, or the kind they would have wanted to have, but they did their best to deal with reality.

"They visited with Ted for two days, two visits a day, each one not too long, because he needed his naps," Halberstam writes. "On the last visit, Dominic suddenly said, 'Teddy, I'm going to sing you a song.' It was an Italian love song, the story of two men who were best friends, one of whom was in love with a girl. But he was afraid to tell her, so he did it through his friend, who then stole her away. 'I Love Her, But I Don't Know How to Tell Her, ' Dominic called it.

"Then Dominic began to sing and the house was filled with the sound of his beautiful baritone voice. Ted loved it. He started clapping, and so Dominic sang it again, and Ted clapped again. 'Dommy, Dommy, you did really well,' Ted said when he finished.

The book is filled with little gems like that, and with Halberstam's affection for the men, and for their generation of athletes. "Rarely is work so pleasurable," Halberstam writes in an author's note. It struck me when I was doing the book how lucky I was. An old friend, the writer Russell Baker, hearing what I was doing, told me, 'That's not work, it's stealing.' "